Dave3112
2500 Club Member
Can you tell me a book to help me figure LR out? I have Photoshop elements down pretty well and I bought LR3 thinking it would be close to the same functions and I was wrong. I can't figure that out for the life of me.
Ask Tony...the NARC photography thread.
- Thread starter Onebaldman
- Start date
- Tagged users None
Parkerman
Community Member
Can't say that I know of any books, I just taught myself. It is a bit hard switching from the PS mindset to the LR mindset, but once you do its amazing. I only use PS if I need to do some detailed work. If you shoot in raw, it makes LR that much more awesome.
OP
OP
Onebaldman
Active Member
Depth of Field Table:Depth of Field Table
Since you're photos look better flipped anyway, consider mounting the tripod from the ceiling.
*your*
I agree Nikon and Canon both have their followers, and pros and cons to both brands.
At this point in my research, I'm leaning towards looking for a used Canon body, probably 3-5 years old, so if someone local is looking to upgrade, I may be interested in buying what you're upgrading from.
I'd prefer to have a camera that uses SD / SDHC cards, and still working on figuring out when Canon added that.
I'm sure that there is probably a vibrant Canon camera forum with a reputable marketplace, but I haven't found it yet (nor looked very hard).
Thanks also for mentioning Lightroom. I had been thinking of getting Aperture, but I'll do some more research and see if Lightroom looks like a better fit for us. I hate iPhoto because I don't like not knowing where my images are (perhaps this has gotten better in recent versions). I usually just drag-and-drop my images in the Finder or download them with Image Capture and scale them with GraphicConverter. But, I'm sure I'm missing out on a lot.
Parkerman
Community Member
Lightroom is designed for photographers, Photoshop is designed for way more than just Photography.
Lightroom made it easier and quicker to do the things you need to do, and it also makes handling of your pictures much easier imo. Although as I said, it is good to have photoshop as well for detailed work in some pictures.
H@rry
Troll
I use Picasa to adjust the white balance and convert from raw to jpeg and then use Gimp to resize, crop, adjust the color, sharpen, stack layers, etc. I downloaded the trial of LR several years ago and had no idea what I was doing. What could I expect from LR that I could not do with the other two programs should I make the commitment to learn it.
JSB
Usually Confused
That is sorta where I am coming from H@rry. I use a combination of Picasa, Picasaweb, Photoshop, and iPhoto to make all of my pictures look similarly crappy. I am not sure if the addition of another tool is going to help me change that. I guess I need to worry first about gear, then technique. After that, I can move on to software.
STL
Active Member
I used to be in this boat until I saw my brother-in-law using Lightroom. I gave Aperture a trial run and Lightroom a trial run, and decided on Lightroom. It does require a different mind-set, but you're almost there if you're using Picasa or iPhoto.
Features that turned me:
* Photo management - I was using iPhoto a long time ago, and then Picasa
* RAW conversion - fast with top notch noise reduction and image control, I always shoot raw to get the extra dynamic range. iPhoto and Picasa do this, but not well
* Image correction - crop, rotate, healing brush, exposure, toning, noise reduction, lens/body correction, and effects are all built in
* No need to maintain intermediate JPGs or PSDs, everything is non-destructive
* Copy & pasting conversion settings - if it's wrong in one, the next N are going to be close to the same wrong
* Publishing - once I wrapped my head around this, it's just downright cool
- Posting on Flickr is easy
- Updates to images are automatically tagged to be republished
I no longer use iPhoto, Picasa, and rarely use Photoshop. I publish to Flickr, Facebook, and Picasaweb directly from inside Lightroom.
I also set up a "Hard Drive" publishing service that goes into a DropBox folder. My MacBook, iMac and PC all use that folder for desktop wallpaper
dictionaaron
Community Member
im a big fan of pentax myself, i have a k-x and a k-r. the glasses is usually cheaper since most canon/nikon etc camera have lenses that have image stabilization in the lense. the pentax does it on the focal plane so pretty much any pentax lense from the past 40 years would work on there.(minus the autofocus of course on old ones). most of my family uses canons and i like them as well. i second the play with them and see which one you like mentality though.
Parkerman
Community Member
Ok, so I apparently lied about replying during lunch, though STL pretty much covered it.
One of the things I love about Lightroom is that it stores your originals away in a folder that either it creates, or that you create. It arranges everything in there by when it was uploaded, in the year that it was uploaded. Those stay there unchanged no matter what you do to the pictures. When you edit a picture, its history will always be there, so if you decide later that you wanted more contrast, or you really wonder how it would be with a little less saturation, its an easy fix. You can always see your history, unless for some reason you wiped it clean.
Lightroom is really meant to combine everything you need all in one package. You organize all your photos, you can create categories for them within LR to make them easier to sort through. You edit your pictures using a similar interface that you would use when processing a raw picture in Photoshop [at least the last time I used PS to it was that way]. Presets are extremely easy to use and make when editing. Then you export your picture to where you want it to be, through which you can easily add a watermark and re-size.
I personally don't want to use 3 more 4 programs to get my end result. I would much rather use Lightroom, and occasionally use Photoshop when I need to remove a power line, some stray hairs, or touch up some skin on someone. That is the kind of detailed work I use PS for. You know, sometimes you just have to totally restitch someone's head into a picture from another picture.... Haha.
One of the things I love about Lightroom is that it stores your originals away in a folder that either it creates, or that you create. It arranges everything in there by when it was uploaded, in the year that it was uploaded. Those stay there unchanged no matter what you do to the pictures. When you edit a picture, its history will always be there, so if you decide later that you wanted more contrast, or you really wonder how it would be with a little less saturation, its an easy fix. You can always see your history, unless for some reason you wiped it clean.
Lightroom is really meant to combine everything you need all in one package. You organize all your photos, you can create categories for them within LR to make them easier to sort through. You edit your pictures using a similar interface that you would use when processing a raw picture in Photoshop [at least the last time I used PS to it was that way]. Presets are extremely easy to use and make when editing. Then you export your picture to where you want it to be, through which you can easily add a watermark and re-size.
I personally don't want to use 3 more 4 programs to get my end result. I would much rather use Lightroom, and occasionally use Photoshop when I need to remove a power line, some stray hairs, or touch up some skin on someone. That is the kind of detailed work I use PS for. You know, sometimes you just have to totally restitch someone's head into a picture from another picture.... Haha.
My laptop has a relatively small SSD. When it starts getting too full, I could see myself wanting to move old images to offline storage (e.g. external hard drive). If I do that, will LR still allow me to see previews of the images and maintain the history, then prompt me which drive volume to mount to get access to edit the image again? (Or not quite as easy -- if I put the original image back (e.g. maybe I have a 2011 folder I archived), will LR find it?)
Last night I spent about 30 minutes Googling trying to find a list of Publishing Services LR can export to. I never found a list, only Facebook, Flickr, and Hard Drive. Do some of you know some other popular sites that LR integrates well with? For example, if I take some photos of an item I want to sell, can I resize them and send them to an eBay listing in one swoop?
Last night I spent about 30 minutes Googling trying to find a list of Publishing Services LR can export to. I never found a list, only Facebook, Flickr, and Hard Drive. Do some of you know some other popular sites that LR integrates well with? For example, if I take some photos of an item I want to sell, can I resize them and send them to an eBay listing in one swoop?
Parkerman
Community Member
I wouldn't imagine ebay being a place you could publish to. Because it would need more information than just pictures I would assume.
Adobe - Lightroom Export Plug-In
There are some of the plug-ins you can have for exporting your pictures.
You can move old images to an external drive, the history would stay with the Lightroom catalog, but you wouldn't be able to preview the pictures anymore. You would just have to put the pictures back where they were and go find one of them, and LR would link up the rest.
OP
OP
Onebaldman
Active Member
Here is a picture from my tank from sometime during the summer. I thought it looked cool with the way the hermit crab was looking.
It might just be from being scaled down for a forum posting or my lousy vision, but I have a hard time spotting the crab's eyes unless I zoom in. Have you tried a tighter crop and getting rid of most of the out-of-focus foreground rock? If you have a large enough image, it might be cool to just have the crab in a sea of yellow. It'd make a good forum avatar.
Similar threads
New Posts
-
-
California Live Goods Extremely Rare Taiwan High End Zoa- Latest: JustAReefer
-
-
